The arrests follow attacks against companies like MasterCard and Visa that cut funding to Wikileaks. Anonymous says that it is at "war" with the UK government following the arrests. (Source: Guardian UK)

Fiery statement from Anonymous follows the arrest of several of the group's hackers

Amid the drama unfolding in Egypt, drama of a
very different nature was unfolding in the U.S. over the weekend. Hackers
belonging to one of the highest profile online communities have accused the
U.S. and UK governments of declaring "war" on them, and vow to fight
back.

I. The Search

The turmoil began on Thursday, when the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigations executed 40 search warrants, raiding the
houses ofmembers
of the group Anonymous, a 1,000+ member group of online enthusiasts/hackers
who met on the image-board site 4Chan.

The raids followed Anonymous members coordinating
andexecuting
distributed denial of service (DDoS)and other
malicious attacks on credit card companies and financial institutions.
The attacks came after those companiesdenied
fundingfor controversial leaks siteWikileaks,
saying that the site was supporting illegal activity. The hackers used a
DDoS program dubbed the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) tool -- an homage toStar
Wars: The Empire Strikes Back -- in their attacks.

Anonymous dubbed the attacks "Operation
Payback". The attacks were executed during the second week of
December and succeeded in briefly disabling some of the targeted businesses'
web portals.

Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree
with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of
censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then
governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree
with.

Authorities have since worked with financial
institutions and antivirus software makers to weed out and block the LOIC, putting
an end (for now) to the attacks.

II. The Arrests

Now international authorities are getting a bit of
"payback" of their own. In the Netherlands several arrests were
reportedly made. And in the UK five people ages 25 to 16 were taken in for
questioning. Among those arrested was the 22-year-old spokesperson,
Coldblood.

Arrests may be in store in the U.S., as well,
pending the results of the FBI's investigation. As of Monday no
U.S.-based arrests had been announced yet.

A group calling itself “Anonymous” has claimed responsibility for
the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies’ and
organizations’ actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the
group makes available for free download on the Internet. The victims included
major U.S. companies across several industries.

The FBI also is reminding the public that facilitating or conducting a DDoS
attack is illegal, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as exposing
participants to significant civil liability.

III. Anonymous Says it is at
"War"

Following the arrests Anonymous has released a
statement [PDF]
commenting:

Not only does it reveal the fact that you do not seem to
understand the present-day political and technological reality, we also take
this as a serious declaration of war from yourself, the UK government, to us,
Anonymous, the people.

First and foremost, it is important to realize what a DDoS attack exactly is
and what it means in the contemporary political context. As traditional means
of protest (peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, the blocking of a crossroads or
the picketing of a factory fence) have slowly turned into nothing but an empty,
ritualised gesture of discontent over the course of the last century, people
have been anxiously searching for new ways to pressure politicians and give
voice to public demands in a manner that might actually be able to change
things for the better. Anonymous has, for now, found this new way of voicing
civil protest in the form of the DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service,
attack. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest, we block

access to our opponents infrastructure to get our message across. Whether or
not this infrastructure is located in the real world or in cyberspace, seems
completely irrelevant to us.

Moreover, we would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on
the difference between a DDoS attack and hacking, as these concepts often seem
to be confounded when media and policy-makers talk about Anonymous.
Hacking as such is defined by the law as ‘unauthorised access to a computer or
network’, whereas a DDoS attack is simply a case of thousands of people making
legitimate connections to a publicly accessible webserver at the same time,
using up the entire bandwidth or processing power of the given server at once
and thereby causing a huge ‘traffic jam’.

It is clear then, that arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is
exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their
hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest is one of the
fundamental pillars of any democracy and should not be restricted in any way.

Moreover, we have noted that similar attacks have also been carried out against
Wikileaks itself, yet so far, nobody has been arrested in connection with these
attacks, nor are there even any signs of an investigation into this issue at
all. Yet, we know exactly who was responsible for that attack. Anonymous
believes it is unfair and hypocritical to attempt to put these 5 arrested anons
to trial without even attempting to find those who DDoS’ed a website which you
oppose. We can therefore only assume that these arrests are politically
motivated, and were being carried out under pressure from the US government.
Anonymous can not, and will not, stand idle while this injustice is being done.

What exact steps Anonymous will take to fight back
in this "war" against the UK and Netherlands governments remains to
be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the group will similarly call
for a war against the U.S. if it makes arrests.

The members of Anonymous arrested in the UK face
up to 10 years in prison and ~$8,000 USD in fines, under the UK's Computer
Misuse Act.

In related news, Anonymous is calling for internet
action [video]
in support of protesters in Egypt. The announcement comes after Egyptian
authorities are seeking to block communication, impairing protesters' ability
to organize.

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Wrong. A DDOS attack in nothing more than a sit in. Or peaceful protest. No one is harmed physically from either of these actions but they both have some economic impact. Politicians are always making laws online that would be considered unconstitutional if they were done in the physical world.

Hardly a sit in.Were these attacks launched from and executed only from computers with which anonymous exclusively controls with full permission?

DDOS attacks are successful when they involve a botnet, especially against companies as large as creditors. That means their "peaceful sit in" was propelled through means of unwilling hostage computers.

Also, picket fences and sit ins can form on public property as a form of protest, but on private property your motivations do not matter as then it becomes TRESPASSING. You can be arrested for trespassing.

I support the "wiki leaks movement" but I certainly show no support for wikileaks itself, only the more dignified competitors.

yup. saying sit in is analogues to DDOS works at the surface but once you go deeper the analogy fell apart.

but anonymous did raise a good point though: how come only DDOS attack that is pro to wikileaks that got prosecuted? how come none of the DDOS attack against wikileaks being prosecuted right now? aren't we all equal under the law?

quote: but anonymous did raise a good point though: how come only DDOS attack that is pro to wikileaks that got prosecuted? how come none of the DDOS attack against wikileaks being prosecuted right now? aren't we all equal under the law?

Mastercard is based in the U.S. If they complain to their government about the DDoS, and the government think it's a valid complaint, it will take action in response. Like sending the FBI after the perpetrators.

Wikileaks is(?) based in Australia and Switzerland. At least that's where their servers were. I don't think their organization even has a base in any country. It is not the FBI's responsibility to investigate DDoS attacks against Wikileaks (unless asked to do so by Australia/Switzerland in the course of their investigations). If Wikileaks wants to ask for their host government's assistance in investigating the DDoS attacks against them, they are free to do so. Maybe that government might actually help them despite all the bridges they've burnt by taking a broad "no secret is safe" approach to leaks.

And that gets to a point I think a lot of people are missing. They're being blinded by their philosophical zeal for the idea of free information, and their ideological schadenfreude at seeing the corporate and big-government targets of Wikileaks squirm. They're forgetting that power is not just a state of being, it's a process. It's not enough to simply have power, you also have to be able to hold onto power.

If a site like Wikileaks earns, through its leaks, the ire of all the governments on earth, it will not survive no matter how appealing the ideals it supports. It's supporters will simply be prosecuted, persecuted, jailed, and even executed until it becomes ineffective as an organization. Remaining in power is a balancing act, between implementing something as close to your ideals as practically possible, while making sure you have friends (powerful ones) which will help you if you get in trouble. Idealists tend to forget this, and demand strict adherence to their ideals, even if the resulting organization is not self-sustainable, or even self-destructive.

In terms of improving the lives of the peoples of the world, Wikileaks' lists of leaks is skewed against the democratic nations whose ideals are its very lifeblood, while woefully thin against the totalitarian states which are the true bane of modern society. To make an analogy, Wikileaks is busy scolding the dog for sometimes chasing the chickens, while the fox is running loose in the henhouse. They're doing it wrong. You want the dog to help you chase the fox out first.

They used a botnet.I understand how ddos works, but a single user is not going to cause enough of an impact to even be noticed. 1000 members at once will STILL only cause a moderate impact. To say a ddos is ok because one refresh is ok is like saying taking every book in every library is ok vs borrowing just 1. End result is that it broke a terms of service agreement with their internet provider, engaged in illegal activity with malicious intent over private property.A sit in on the white house front lawn is a right, if your neighbors didn't like your choice of siding on your home would you tolerate them all sitting on YOUR front lawn? Do you think they have the legal right to do so?

The lines of Civil disobedience and criminal activity are often blurred by those with malicious intent.

Reading other new sites shows that there is a speculative non-voluntary bot net because the amount of bandwidth consumed voluntarily is unimaginable.

quote: "With the rate of machines engaging in this activity, we are speculating that the hacktivists are now operating using involuntary botnets – infecting unaware victims to involve them in this campaign. And operating a botnet, is of course, an illegal activity. " Shulman notes.

I would need more conclusive evidence that there is in fact an anonymous botnet. I feel that if there were 3000 active users of the LOIC tool using multiple computers, than you could get close to botnet efficiency.

Anyway, I agree a sit in on the lawn by the white house is legal. As well as filling the capital lawn with millions of people to promote equal rights for African Americans.

The problem with your closing argument is that we are not talking about the color of siding on homes.

We are discussing corporations that have more money and resources than most governments in the World. Corperations that use lobbying to affect our government's decisions as well as being pressured by our government to enact certain policies. These credit companies have direct impact on our daily lives. They control our ability to buy items in our western economic culture, while being protected as a person and private entity.

How do you create a discourse with paypal? This company has no real physical location representative of its global power and impact. The only way to send a message is using the internet to sit in at their 'public' site. Is the main page of a web site used by millions of people a private space, or can it be considered just as public as the mall in Washington D.C.

How would you propose a different model of getting a message as the site of this company. How would you plan a sit-in on anonymous, if they only operate from an online website as well.

Ummm... LOIC was entirely voluntary, hardly a botnet, but probably approaching botnet effectiveness. Botnets only stay effective if their bandwidth consumed doesn't become noticeable to the infected user (or the user/ISP will shut it down), so a voluntary network of people going at it are easily 10 times more effective.

1000 Users who voluntarily use ALL their bandwidth with an average down of 10 mbps is already 10gbps. That's the entire capacity of a small datacentre. I know for a fact that large datacentres (over 50k servers) push about 20gbps at peak, and capacity is usually double peak, so that's a max of 40gbps. You'd only need 4000 voluntary active users with an AVERAGE internet connection to swamp a datacentre of over 50 THOUSAND servers. And I imagine most supporters probably have more than 10mbps.

I disagree. On private property, usually someone is asked to leave before arrests are made, some attempt to keep out protesters is made. Neither has been done here, as a ddos is based on legitimate page requests. No one is hurt, but entry into the site is made more difficult or impossible, much like a protest in front of a store. If you can get through the "picket line", nothing is stopping you from making a purchase. I also disagree with the assertion that this botnet is a hack. If memory serves, it is used on a voluntary basis, and therefore not a hack... but rather an organizing tool, like union dues. I agree with the principle they are fighting for, and maybe their methods are warranted... though I think the facelessness of it removes the humanity from their cause. On the other hand, governments use armies (with hackers), and these mega-corporations use armed mercenaries (and hackers) all the time to impose their will on populations all over the world... and often with complete disregard for the suffering they inflict. That is the few claiming legitimacy and inflicting harm on the many, and by more violent means. This ddos attack is the many claiming legitimacy and inflicting some monetary harm on the few, by less violent means. I don't know about you, but that makes anonymous look pretty good.

Well, a sit-in actually requires, you know, effort. You actually have to go somewhere and look a business-owner in the eye and sit there. The business owner CAN and often WILL call the police and the police will come by and pick you up, physically, and take you to jail. You can post bail and be out later that day. Eventually you will go to court and pay a small fine.

Spending 15 seconds clicking a download link, clicking install, and setting the application to 'On' requires about as much effort and personal risk as wiping your butt.

I am offended that the script-kiddies that installed LOIC equate their actions with real civil disobedience. They are not like the participants in civil rights marches in the US. They are not like the protesters in Egypt right now. They are operating from behind the veil of perceived anonymity and are finding out that their actions have left a very clear trail back to their parent's house. What they did is the digital equivalent of vandalism. Kind of like squirting glue in the locks on the doors to a business. I think we can all agree that this is a criminal act. Programming your computer to do that type of action based upon some third-parties targeting instructions is clearly a criminal act.

I am pretty sure that you have a freedom of assembly and picketing. Your business owner can call the police all they want, but your freedom of peaceful assembly is protected on public property. Your comments suggest our government has taken a turn for a fascist regime.

That's the entire point of a sit-in. You go there, you get harassed or arrested and you show the flaws in the society or legal system by doing so. If the system isn't flawed you either don't get arrested or harassed, or nobody cares. The nearest equivalent is surrounding the registers and the entrances and exits to keep customers out, and there are laws for that sort of behavior. The rights of citizens allow far more than the rights of government in a fair system, so there is a difference between what somebody can do and ask the police to force compliance with on property they own and what the government can do on its own.

quote: Your business owner can call the police all they want, but your freedom of peaceful assembly is protected on public property.

If you're protesting at someone's business, you're not on public property - you're on the business owner's. And if you are on public property, most jurisdictions have rules about permits for large gatherings of people. Furthermore, none of your rights ever allow you to infringe on the rights of anyone else. So while you may be able to peacefully assemble, you still have to abide by harassment, loitering, gathering/permit laws. If you fail to do so, just like he said, the person you're targeting will call the police and you'll be arrested.

Right, and didn't they say that a bunch of these kids have been arrested? That is personal risk. Setting up a website is much faster and less hands on in a physical sense than building a factory or a storefront, so why should civil disobedience be any different by the same means? The operators of a website also exist behind a perceived veil of anonymity. No anonymous is not like a 1960's civil rights march, but of course the internet didn't exist at the time, and if it had, the freedom riders might have used this tactic as well. How do you propose they go on a march on the internet? All they were doing was being a disruption, which is basically the same tactic that MLK and Ghandi did (of course i don't mean to put anonymous on the same level as them, but their tactics are very similar). Just because someone isn't getting blasted with a water cannon or beaten with truncheons doesn't mean their message isn't valid and sincere, or that their methods are half-hearted. Maybe those civil rights leaders would have had an easier time and a quicker resolution to their causes if it were "easy" like this. The contrast to Egypt is an excellent point, but not the one you were trying to make... anonymous didn't loot anything or break anything or light anything on fire. The glue in the business doors locks is a weak analogy, because nothing is damaged.

Do you read everything you're supposed to read?Do you think everything you're supposed to think?Buy what you're told you should want?No? Then I think we can all agree that this is a criminal act. You should call your nearest police station NOW!